Review by Jo Westwood of “Only Ever Yours” by Louise O'Neill

This review was first published here.

When I was eighteen, I read Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, and it blew the bloody doors off my intellectual and emotional prison and opened up a whole new world of feminist consciousness. It changed my life. Only Ever Yours is the only book since that has repeated that moment in time in my personal history – and I think every young woman should read it. It’s searing, brutal and undeniably honest, and whilst set in a future dystopia, just like Atwood’s novel, it’s so woven from real events and behaviours it lays all society’s current failings bare for all to see.

frieda is sixteen, and has spent her entire life in the School, run by the chastities. All the girls are obsessed by their appearance – but in this future, the School enforces that obsession, by daily weigh-ins, a ranking system and lessons where the girls’ bodies are ruthlessly compared to those of their peers. Brainwashed since birth, the girls face a future either as companions – wives to rich men – or concubines. As the day of the Ceremony inexorably draws near, the day when their future role will be assigned to them, their competitiveness reaches fever pitch. But frieda is slowly failing, knocked out of orbit as one of the most highly ranked girls, by her former best friend isabel. Formerly #1, or queen bee, isabel seems to be on self-destruct, and as frieda tries to both help isabel and simultaneously distance herself from her, she’s making mistakes and getting noticed in the wrong ways. The consequences will be shattering.

This novel is brutal from the first page, and while the true horrors of their adult lives are only suggested, never fully revealed, O’Neill creates a very visceral sense of a claustrophobic community where there is truly no way out. Chickens get a taste of your meat girl… Atwood’s heroines were often passively complicit in their oppression, and in O’Neill’s novel, the ways in which women betray each other on a daily basis, thus enabling the power of the patriarchy to be maintained, are searingly dissected. frieda is not your average heroine either, not always sympathetic, not always likeable. And where other novels may have taken the romantic option (i.e. your knight in shining armour will rescue you), O’Neill plays it true to the end, in a truly haunting, terrible climax.

There is so much texture to this book, so much to devour and debate, so many clever allusions, all within a compelling plot populated by vivid characters. Having spent most of my career reading and critiquing Young Adult Fiction, I know that it's a very rich genre that pulls no punches and where nothing is out of bounds - yet this book really shocked me. It’s one of the most challenging Young Adult books I’ve read and certainly has the power to awaken feminist consciousness in teenage girls (and women), changing lives in the process. The cleverness is that despite the futuristic, dystopian setting, so many aspects of it are rooted in the realities of our world - from the celeb culture that makes girls focus on their weight, to the sexual slavery and brainwashing (and if you think that's far-fetched, well, it's happening all over the world right this minute). This is dystopian fiction at its best - taking reality and twisting the context so you actually see what is hidden all around you. I actually think it’s better than The Handmaid’s Tale – more cutting, more graphic, and more unflinching in its exposure of female relationships. Terrifying, haunting and compulsive, Only Ever Yours takes its place on my shelf of books that change your life. Superb.

About the reviewer

Jo Westwood is a librarian, editor, writer, gardener and geek who loves curling up with a good book. As her job as a specialist children's librarian means she reads at least one novel per day, that's rather fortunate, and her obsession with the novels of Phil Rickman in particular is praise indeed. She's currently working on creating a time travel device that will allow her to fit in even more reading, as there are far too many good books and rather less time in which to read them than she would like. Jo's blogs at aniseed.com.

Review by Jo Westwood of the play “More Than A Woman” by Russell Liney performed by LUTheatre

I confess that although I’ve enjoyed watching Bette Davis on film, I know very little about her, other than her reputation as a bit of a diva. So it was fascinating to watch this play based on key incidents in her career, which challenged that reputation and put it in context.

Starting with her arrival in Hollywood, supported by her strong and determined mother, Bette immediately appears as independent, ambitious, and unafraid of voicing her opinions. The studio are more interested in her looks than her ability, but this is an attitude Bette refuses to bow to, and her early career is characterised by frequent spats with producer Jack Warner. Although he attempts to sideline her by casting her in second-rate films, Bette is not to be deterred, and succeeds in becoming one of the most famous, Oscar-winning actresses of the Golden Age of film. But it’s not without pain.

The play is cleverly structured so that an older Bette, drunk after winning an Oscar, reflects on the path of her career, which is told in a series of flashbacks. Confiding in lighting engineer Bud Gabrielli, she reveals the struggles she has faced but also the strength she gained from her mother’s support, which gave her the belief and commitment necessary to succeed as a woman in a man’s world. She has indeed had to be “more than a woman”. Counterpointed by Bud’s own story of his same-sex relationship, and how he has to disguise his true self from an intolerant society, the play highlights the flipside of the Golden Age and how people adopt different strategies in order to survive and thrive. It’s moving, and still very pertinent: the film industry is still rife with sexism, and homophobia is all too prevalent, so by holding up a mirror to the past it makes you recognise the continued struggles of the present. It’s also frequently funny – the character of Miss Murgatroyd, Warner’s secretary who cheekily subverts his instructions and his rages is brilliant, and the Catholic landlady Mrs O’Leary’s tirade against the “boy and his handyman” living upstairs is just hilarious.
The actors portraying all the roles in the play are excellent; Bette’s sheer physical presence, ably played by Francesca Leone and Emily Dilworth, is spot on, really conveying the feistiness of Bette as both a performer and a person. And Bryanie Whittingham-Ball as Miss Murgatroyd and starlet Miriam Hopkins almost steals the show. Ben Crome as Jack Warner clearly thoroughly enjoyed being nasty (although bested every time by Bette!) and Alex Hatcher’s role as Bud is nicely understated, hitting just the right note of genuine in an industry of fakery.

Russell’s play is finely observed and crafted with great affection for his subject, his passion for this era of film-making shining through. He commented to me after the play’s second performance that he wanted to portray strong women, and I certainly feel that he succeeded; Bette’s story is quite inspirational, and it’s given me a new perspective on the old films that I’ve watched (and will now seek out to watch as well). This is Russell’s first play to be performed, but I hope it’s the first of many – his blog at https://russelliney.wordpress.com/ charts his creative work and the play is available to watch on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITmPCh_011Q. Well done Russell on a brilliant début!

About the reviewer
Jo Westwood is a librarian, editor, writer, gardener and geek who loves curling up with a good book. As her job as a specialist children’s librarian means she reads at least one novel per day, that’s rather fortunate, and her obsession with the novels of Phil Rickman in particular is praise indeed. She’s currently working on creating a time travel device that will allow her to fit in even more reading, as there are far too many good books and rather less time in which to read them than she would like. Jo's blogs at anniseed.com

Review by Jo Westwood of "The Merrily Watkins" series, by Phil Rickman

I make no bones about it, but I have an obsession. Since accidentally discovering the latest title in this series – The Magus of Hay – I went back to the beginning  (The Wine of Angels) and worked my way through all twelve books. Then I did it again. And again. And I’m not the only one – Phil’s Facebook group currently has 1814 members and we’re all equally enthralled by the ongoing story of single mother, vicar and exorcist Merrily Watkins. They’re supernatural crime dramas – an unusual mix of two genres which somehow mesh perfectly in Phil’s prose, in a world so carefully crafted it’s like a second home.

Set in the borderlands of Herefordshire and Wales, Merrily struggles to balance her duties to her parish, her ambivalent interest in the world of the paranormal, and her relationship with her pagan teenage daughter Jane, all the while walking the tightrope of political machinations in both the Diocese and the media. As a woman in a man’s world, and doing a job many see as frivolous, she tries to retain her integrity as well as develop her spirituality. Called in on occasion to help the police with their more unusual cases, her life is anything but ordinary. She’s utterly believable as a character, and makes the whole concept of an exorcist work for even the most sceptical of readers.

Surrounding her are a large cast who are all drawn with such deftness and vitality that you feel like you really know them. Feisty Jane, Merrily’s daughter and environmental activist, is definitely my alter ego! Lol Robinson, Merrily’s cautious lover, is a man locked in his own tormented past, and his efforts to move beyond this are moving indeed. Huw Owen, her exorcist mentor, is wonderfully irascible and ambivalent. Frannie Bliss is the tame, slightly maverick copper whose blood is 95% caffeine (I confess to being slightly in love with Frannie), and Annie Howe is his ambitious and hard-nosed boss, the antithesis of Merrily’s emotional centre. And Gomer Parry, the wild and wily old Welshman and proprietor of a plant hire company, is a brilliant creation – saving the day on his digger on more than one occasion! Everybody needs a Gomer in their life. When he confronted a killer in Lamp of the Wicked, I nearly had a panic attack.

The plots are labyrinthine with endless depths, which is why you can read them over and over again and find new strands that you didn’t see before. They deal with the depths of human nature in all its perversity, and the thread running through all of them is how belief affects human behaviour.

Rickman portrays Christianity and Paganism with a real understanding, showing how belief can be both a strength and a weakness, a temptation to evil and a call to compassion. They are anything but sensationalist, treating religion with respect but at the same time exposing the hypocrisy and corruption that can lurk in the heart of any institution or individual.

Phil Rickman’s stories are intelligent and thought-provoking, as well as gripping, shocking and downright addictive. Both the sense of place and character in this series are so strong, it’s not surprising that his fans are so obsessive. He’s a fantastic writer and this series is exceptional – he’s made the cross-genre of supernatural crime entirely his own, and done it with both seriousness and style.

His new novel, Friends of the Dusk, is published on 3rd December. My phone will be off the hook for that week.

Call Gomer Parry Plant Hire. I’m moving to the Borders as fast as I can!

About the reviewer
Jo Westwood is a librarian, editor, writer, gardener and geek who loves curling up with a good book. As her job as a specialist children’s librarian means she reads at least one novel per day, that’s rather fortunate, and her obsession with the novels of Phil Rickman in particular is praise indeed. She’s currently working on creating a time travel device that will allow her to fit in even more reading, as there are far too many good books and rather less time in which to read them than she would like. Jo's blogs at anniseed.com